Legacy of the Brighton bomb

TWO fifty four a.m. A bloody awful time to be woken up, particularly by a bomb. I was a few yards from the explosion on the sixth floor of the Grand Hotel in Brighton on October 12, 1984 – a full 25 years ago – but mercifully it was a stout Victorian structure. The blast went downwards between thick brick walls, not sideways. I was lucky, others weren’t.

DESTRUCTION: The top four floors of the Grand Hotel in Brighton collapsed, leaving 5 dead []

The noise was like being inside an avalanche, with rocks falling all around, followed by a silence so profound that for a moment I thought I had gone deaf. Then dust, cloying, choking, filling my eyes and throat. Time to get out.

The emergency lighting got me to a rear fire escape where I found the imposing figure of Sir Robin Day, the doyen of political journ-alists, clad in a magnificent silk dressing gown. Nearby was a government minister clad in nothing but a small hand towel. I gave him my raincoat.

It’s strange how people react to emergencies. I found Sir Keith Joseph emerging from the dust in his dressing gown and clutching his ministerial red box. Another senior politician, Sir Jock Bruce-Gardyne, appeared dressed in an immaculate three-piece suit. Appearance was clearly important to him, even in such circumstances. Sadly, the effect was ruined by the two different coloured socks he was wearing. Thereafter he came to be known as One Sock Jock.

We knew it was a bomb. We’d been under attack for several years from Irish terrorists. At the start of the 1979 election campaign they had murdered Airey Neave, a war hero and Mrs Thatcher’s chief of staff, killed by a car bomb inside the precincts of Parliament, and there would be others over the next few years. A stupid report began circulating that everyone had escaped unharmed but that was never going to be.

A terrible scar ran from top to bottom of the hotel. The great sign that adorned its front sagged drunkenly. I knew that sign. It was on the balcony directly outside the room of my then boss Norman Tebbit, for whom I worked as a special adviser, and his wife Margaret. She had made lunch for us before I had driven them to Brighton. It was to be the last meal she ever prepared. I had spent most of the previous day in the Tebbits’ room but now it was just an empty, evil hole.

B righton showed true grit that night. Boarding houses opened up to dispense tea and wartime spirit, and later in the morning Marks & Spencer opened its doors to fit out all who had escaped without proper clothing. That included the minister in my raincoat, who in the attempt to cover his modesty up front, had inadvertently been exposing far too much of himself behind.

The emergency services quickly began digging out survivors – and bodies. They found Norman beneath tons of rubble. “Are you OK, Norman?” Fred Bishop, the fireman who dug him out, asked. “Get off my bloody foot, Fred!” he cried in agony. He had lain there for hours, holding Margaret’s hand as they weakened, saying goodbye.

As soon as I heard they were digging him out I headed for the local hospital. There were no adequate crisis management procedures in those days, no mobile phones, no supporting staff, but I and another party worker commandeered a room with one shared phone. We had to let families know before they switched on the morning news or had journalists pounding on their doors.

We had nothing, no phone numbers, no proper details – I didn’t even have any socks – but as dawn broke we managed to make contact. By this time they had pulled Margaret Tebbit from the rubble but the news wasn’t good. As the doctor told me, and then her children, she had “a problem with her back” – fearful words that have confined her to a wheelchair ever since.

Five people were murdered that night. The bombers missed Margaret Thatcher by no more than the width of her hotel bathroom. Others were cruelly injured. In the hospital room next to Norman lay John (now Lord) Wakeham, the government Chief Whip. His wife had been killed and he received massive injuries. Medical staff were talking of the need to amputate his legs. The fact that he survived was a marvel, that he walked again, a miracle.

All jobs carry an element of risk. If ever I had been naive enough to believe that politics was about the pursuit of glory, that night finished it. Some people paid a terrible price for our democratic freedoms.

A few days later I was summoned back to the police station at Brighton to reclaim the personal belongings of the Tebbits that had been dug from the rubble. I walked into a large room like a gymnasium. On all sides were plastic bags filled with strange-looking items. I was shown to one. It was filled with dust and inside I found Margaret’s handbag. It was terribly battered and torn. Like Margaret herself. I sat outside on the steps of the police station and wept. Then I dropped her bag in a rubbish bin – I couldn’t give it back.

Some people are able to forgive those responsible for the bomb. I can’t, at least not until they have asked for forgiveness and shown genuine remorse. Such acts are evil, there is no excuse. The claim that Britain was like Nazi Germany for its policies in Northern Ireland and so deserved what it got is total garbage. We weren’t like Nazi Germany and never will be – not unless the terrorists win.

A few days ago I went back to the Grand Hotel for the first time since the bomb. It’s been rebuilt and restored, a monument to the fact that the bombers failed. They didn’t even stop the conference. Less than seven hours after the bomb exploded, Margaret Thatcher stood up to hurl defiance at them. “The fact that we are gathered here now – shocked but composed and determined – is a sign not only that this attack has failed but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”

Yet there was little justice to be found in the aftermath. The terrorist convicted of the bombing, Patrick Magee, was sentenced to 35 years for his crime, only to be released after just 14 years. He wasn’t acting alone of course. He has always refused to identify those senior IRA figures on the Army Council who ordered him to commit the murders and who share the responsibility. Four other lesser figures convicted of involvement have also been released. Only the victims are still serving a sentence, every day of their lives.